The Top Five Web Apps I Use the Most — What Are Yours?

The more I work on the computer, the more I realize that Google is probably right about the Cloud being our future. In fact, other than Photoshop and friends, the occasional game, and the desktop version of Evernote, I pretty much live in Web App Land. Outside of the obvious like Facebook, Twitter (plus related apps), and Gmail, there are approximately 30 web apps that I use or visit on a semi-regular basis — and that’s not including the Chrome extensions that are direct links to yet other web apps.

Here are the five that I use the most:

Producteev, Springpad, and Evernote

Okay, so I’m actually cheating a little bit and making my first web app a combination of three. If you’ve read 40Tech before, and especially if you’ve read me, you already know that these three apps are a huge part of my personal productivity system. I had to include them in my list, but I didn’t want them to take up more than half of it! Besides, all three are practically indispensable to me: Evernote for writing and quick ideas, Springpad for bookmarking and research, and Producteev for GTD task management and overall organization. I could do (and have done) all of those things with each one of those apps, but decided to play to their strengths and combine them for the best results.

Feedly

This is another app I’ve covered before. Feedly is probably the best RSS/Google Reader client that I have ever used. The visual presentation of all of my feeds in a magazine format that learns what I like is utterly fantastic. I love it!

Netflix

I don’t get a lot of time to watch TV or movies, but when I do sneak some in, I usually wind up on Netflix. The streaming movie and TV show catalogue is not nearly as well-stocked up here in Canada, but there is still a lot of great content, especially for $8/month.

Mint

Since Mint.com merged with Intuit and finally started offering its finance management awesome in Canada, it has lived in my browser. There’s still a lot of work I need to do with it to get the most out of the array of tools and resources it offers, but Mint is definitely a web app that is here to stay for me.

Dropbox

Dropbox is my main cloud storage service. I also use SugarSync, Box.net, iDrive Backup, MiMedia, and a few others, but Dropbox is the most developed — or at least the most supported by other services. I use it to backup files, to get them on to my iPhone and iPad easily, and to share files with friends, family, and business colleagues. That’s hard to beat.

There are, as I mentioned, a multitude of other apps that I use, and there are even a few that are threatening the hold of some of my current list. I’ll be reviewing those few soon, so stay tuned!

Now it’s your turn: what are your top five web apps?

Bobby Travis

Bobby isn't 40-something, but is a strong supporter of the Grown-up Geek kind. He's a loving husband and father first, but is also a freelance writer, productivity nut, operatically trained singer, and (not-so) closet geek.
Check out his random thoughts, wackiness, and Instagram pics on Tumblr, Twitter, or Google+-- or just head over to bobby-travis.com.

15 Comments:

GQueues – I was a Toodledo user, then most recently a Producteev user. As there was no native android support I’ve recently switched to GQueues as my task/GTD and general list app. I find Producteev colourful, but a bit sluggish, and the lack of control (eg export) always made me wary of trusting Producteev too much.

GoogleApps – Gmail, iGoogle, GTalk, Calendar with multiple domains for both work and personal life.

Evernote – I tossed up between Springpad, Catch and Evernote and moved between them for a long while. I’m on Linux 99% of the time where Evernote has no native app but their most recent Android app revision and introducing nested folders in their web app has won me over, for now.

Soocial – This is my contact manager and syncs my contacts on my android phone (rather than using the inbuilt Google Contacts, which grabs every contact you’ve ever mailed). It synchronizes contacts across my multiple Google Accounts, Mac and iPad.

That’s 5 apps above, but underpinning everything I do, although it’s not actually a web page I open often as such, is LastPass, the cloud password repository. It is the first browser extension I install on any device, and the foundation service I use to reach the above apps.

Thanks for the reply! I’ve been playing with Gqueues. It’s interesting, and I’m planning a GTD in post with it at some point in the near future. I’m pretty invested in Producteev, though. I can’t wait for an iPad app to finally hit, but I’ve been doing well with the iPhone app and web app thus far. I’ve never found it sluggish, myself, at least not in any way that I’ve noticed — but you could have a ton more tasks than me.

I’m going to have to check vitalist out, Chuck. :D It can be a challenge to find an app that suits you perfectly for a GTD (or any productivity) implementation. It depends so much on how you work and what you look for in an app. I’m curious to see how vitalist stacks up for me!

Other than the google suite (gmail/gcal/greader/gcon), I don’t use that many web apps (i.e., in a browser). I do use Remember the Milk, Evernote, Dropbox, etc. but I generally access them from either the desktop version, mobile version, or Chrome extension.

I found that evernote, springpad etc. can be replaced by http://tabbles.net/ and is usable with cloudservice. In theorie you can have everything in one folder and tag everything, even weblinks and emails. I also use the tabbles as folders and tags.

I used evernote for webarticles but now I save them as html tagged by tabbles.

I searched your website for tabbles but nothing came up. What do you think of it?

I’ve looked at Tabbles before, but it was some time ago and, while I don’t remember what it was, something put me off. It could have been the limitations of the free version compared to the price of the other versions, I’m not sure. I may have to take another look.

Not at the moment. I saw the update to Dan’s blog post and there are definitely some ways I can think of to utilize it. I’m not sure it works into my current workflow yet, however, and would have to take a moment to test it.

It would work well, I think, if I was to revert to the Evernote GTD workflow that I originally wrote about, relegating producteev to the backseat as the connected task manager (with Google Calendar hooks). Again, I would have to test the feasibility for it, with redundancy in mind.